OT:Harvard-Enough with Grade Inflation!

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Taken from Bloomberg article

The proposal would cap A grades in undergraduate classes at 20% of students, plus four additional students. The move comes after A grades surged at Harvard: about 60% of grades were A’s in the 2024–25 academic year, more than double the rate in 2006. After administrators pushed for stricter grading last fall, that number dropped to 53%. Faculty have one week to vote, with results expected May 20.

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Supporters say grade inflation has made academic distinctions less meaningful.

Bloomberg writes that students have strongly opposed the plan, arguing it would increase stress, discourage academic risk-taking, and push students toward easier courses. Nearly 85% of undergraduates surveyed by The Harvard Crimson opposed the proposal. Student leader Caleb Thompson said “people really are against this,” while senior Summer Tan said students are already seeking easier classes instead of more challenging ones.

Some faculty members agree. Scott Duke Kominers warned the policy could discourage ambitious students and make Harvard less attractive to top applicants.

Harvard’s decision could influence other elite schools. Yale recently considered an even stricter proposal for a campus-wide average GPA of 3.0. Earlier efforts at Princeton and Wellesley initially reduced top grades but were eventually reversed after student backlash.

Critics argue schools hesitate to grade more strictly because students could be disadvantaged if peer institutions do not follow. Still, supporters believe Harvard’s prestige could set off broader reform.

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Wow. I bet that’s never happened before.

I suppose it matters in certain situations or professions, but I never had an employer ask to see my GPA. Heck, I don’t think my wife has ever asked about it.

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While they’re at it, they should ban multiple-choice tests and also electronics while taking tests. That would force students to actually learn and memorize the course material and be able to solve problems and write thoughtful essays using their own brains.

Spoken from experience as a community college instructor teaching Chemistry for Science Majors. It was like pouring water over Teflon. I gave lectures, assigned homework, did 4-hour labs that the students wrote up carefully in their notebooks. But when tested (no multiple choice, all solving problems and drawing chemical structures from memory) they couldn’t remember anything.

There’s clearly going to be a difference in student quality between a rural community college and Harvard. At least, one would hope. But give them real tests and prove it.

Wendy

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There is…and not just between Harvard (and other Ivies/Seven Sister schools) and lowly community colleges. Doesn’t stop folk trotting out the Harvard grade inflation canard to demonstrate their derriere dolor … and not just online. Or restrict the negativity to grades whilst at Harvard. Getting into the school is a similar target.

Perfect example would be the high school classmate who suggested that my daughter was the fortunate beneficiary of easy access to Harvard on account of affirmative action. Daughter’s put down…and quick as a flash…was “Sez the Yale legacy admission” No need to point out the incongruity of him being one of more than a few who called her a “grade grabber” back in about 9th or 10th grade, or that he was somewhat “second tier” in comparison to the other Ivy bound class members.

I have to chuckle when remembering daughter’s first phonecall home a week after she’d started…“Guess what!?!. I’m only average here. It’s GRRREAT!!!”

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The figure above shows the average undergraduate GPAs for four-year American colleges and universities from 1983-2013 based on data from: Alabama, Alaska-Anchorage, Appalachian State, Auburn, Brigham Young, Brown, Carleton, Coastal Carolina, Colorado, Columbia College (Chicago), Columbus State, CSU-Fresno, CSU-San Bernardino, Dartmouth, Delaware, DePauw, Duke, Elon, Emory, Florida, Furman, Gardner-Webb, Georgia, Georgia State, Georgia Tech, Gettysburg, Hampden-Sydney, Illinois-Chicago. Indiana, Iowa State, James Madison, Kent State, Kenyon, Lehigh, Louisiana State, Miami (Ohio), Michigan, Middlebury, Minnesota, Minnesota-Morris, Missouri, Montclair State, Nebraska-Kearney, North Carolina, North Carolina-Greensboro, North Carolina-Asheville, North Dakota, Northern Arizona, Northern Iowa, Northern Michigan, Northwestern, Oberlin, Penn State, Princeton, Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Purdue, Purdue-Calumet, Rensselaer, Roanoke, Rockhurst, Rutgers, San Jose State, South Carolina, South Florida, Southern Connecticut, Southern Utah, St. Olaf, SUNY-Oswego, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas State, UC-Berkeley, UC-San Diego, UC-Santa Barbara, Utah, Vanderbilt, Virginia, Wake Forest, Washington-Seattle, Washington State, West Georgia, Western Michigan, William & Mary, Wisconsin, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and Yale.

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The rise in college grades during the Vietnam War was well documented. In particular, one college administrator from Michigan State, Arvo Juola, collected annual average GPAs from colleges and universities across the country. This one-man undertaking well before the computer era was impressive. There were some people who maintained grades were rising in the Vietnam era because students in the 1960s and early 1970s were better than those over the previous fifty years, but the conventional wisdom was that those claims were unfounded.

Conventional wisdom does not make it necessarily so. But I suppose education became more regulated & standardized after WW2 and continued to be refined resulting in better prepared students.
Though I suspect some educators were cajoled by some parents pleading that their children need higher grades to gain entrance to a desired university. Some went beyond that:

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It matters a lot. Just like it matters what grades you got in high school, when trying to get into college. When I was there, we were constantly reminded how important it was to have decent grades, since those were the main factor that affected your admission to nearly any graduate program, most summer jobs/internships, and a lot of your employment offers immediately after graduation. Sure, your future employer won’t ever ask about your high school or college GPA, because they already know it almost certainly was a good one if you’re coming out of a really good graduate school or mentorship program or internship or clerkship - because each step you take in your career leads to the next one.

Is that the only way to success? No. There are some kids that have poor grades that achieve tremendous success. But having less than stellar grades moves you from “easy mode” to “hard mode,” just like being a member of a persecuted minority or coming from poverty makes your path to success not impossible, but more difficult than for other kids.

It’s bad to get poor grades in college. It matters. It can affect your life opportunities- or affect what you have to do to get those life opportunities. A student at Harvard who gets B- graded will have fewer opportunities than that A student - which is why students who are paying attention to their future and have ambitions try very hard to make sure they get good grades.

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When i was doing a lot of hiring (my gay rights lpublishing firm was growing AND my employees were dying from AIDS) I ignored grades completely, and simply conversed with applicants. My star employee had zip good education but enormous capabilities that woke up while he was an army grunt for 7 years.
I think of grades as inherently flawed and corrupt.

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And there are some opportunities that are like that. But many others are far more regimented and use grades as a significant first screen. If you apply to a small publishing company whose boss is willing to do lots of in-person interviews regardless of grades, that opportunity is still open to you. Applying to a top ten medical school requires good grades.

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I wonder if the higher grades simply represent better students, particularly at a place like Harvard. Every year, Harvard admits about 2000 undergrads. That has been true back into the early 2000’s (and perhaps earlier).

But going back to 2008 (admissions for the class of 2012), they had about 27,000 applications. https://oira.harvard.edu/files/2025/11/Factbook_2012_2013.pdf (pg 20 of the PDF) This is the oldest data I could find on admissions.

Applications peaked for the class of 2026 at 61,000. Fact Book: College Admissions – Office of Institutional Research & Analytics

Doing a bit of math, Harvard has gone from accepting 7% of applicants in 2008 to 3% of applicants in 2022.

So Harvard has been able to draw from a growing pool of applicants over the last decade. But admissions held steady at 2000, give or take a dozen. That almost certainly means they are able to accept higher quality applicants, which should result in higher quality students.

While this is far from rigorous, it’s at least some hard evidence that shows there may be more going on here than just giving out higher grades for no good reason. The students as a whole may be earning higher grades because they are better students.

--Peter

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Khan Academy measured mastery, not grades. No mastery, no advancement. In other words everybody makes a 100 or they exit the course. Only two outcomes. The difference is how long it takes to complete.

This is the model. Not grades.

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Cheers
Qazulight

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The engineering school I attended back in the late 1970’s had no required courses and prohibited professors from taking attendance or using class participation as a component of your grade. If you thought you could learn Fluid Mechanics by reading the textbook, have at it. You just had to turn in the homework assignments and pass the exams.

The degree requirements were completing 2 semester long projects in your major that were the equivalent of a master’s thesis, a less intensive paper on a Liberal Arts or Humanities topic, and passing a comprehensive exam in your major which about 30% of the students failed on the first try. Failure meant spending an extra semester or two in a remedial program to address the deficiencies exposed with the Comp Exam.

https://web.wpi.edu/News/Journal/Spring97/plans-col.html

{{ The percentage of students failing the Comp became a constant, like Pi. It was right around 30 percent every single time the examination was given. About 20 percent of students received a grade of Distinction (equivalent to an A). Many of us became increasingly concerned about the cause of the failures, their validity, and our ability to deal effectively with failed students. If a student failed because he did not know enough thermodynamics, the answer was simple - take the needed course work. But some students had top grades in all the courses they might be expected to take, but could not handle a comprehensive problem. We organized problem-solving seminars for them, tried to boost their self-confidence, and let them practice with old examinations. It helped, but not that much. }}

That was the key. The “comprehensive problem” solvers excel under such a regime, the practiced test takers, maybe not.

Anyway, I passed my Comp Exam in the middle of Junior year and the only items had left to do my last semester was to get the grade in my Major Qualifying Project and take a gym course. (Oddly while there were no required academic courses, they still required four physical education courses. Recreational Bowling was my only “coursework” my final semester. )

You just had to show up and bowl 3 strings per class, then they let you go. Doesn’t seem like much, but 2 or 3 years earlier WPI won the NCAA Intercollegiate Bowling Championship where Division I, 2 and 3 schools compete in the same tournament. When “Sports Illustrated” called the campus Press Office for comment, they replied “What bowling team?” Apparently the students got no funding from the university, bought their own uniforms, and entered the competition as a “club team”.

Comprehensive problem solvers.

{{ While WPI boasts two NCAA national championships (Women’s Varsity 8 rowers in 2022 and golfer Eric Meerbach ’87), a different type of sports team captured another national championship for the university—a team that had no official coach or even uniforms… }}}

intercst

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Apparently some high schools have many valedictorians because they determine it solely by grade point average, and multiple people end up with a perfect grade point average. I also read about a girl that had straight As throughout high school, except for an A- in a physical education class because she couldn’t do a pull up. She has to settle for being salutatorian instead of valedictorian.

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The students AND the faculty now treat chemistry as a not very useful add-on nowadays. In fact, when one of my sons was choosing which college to attend, at one college the head of the engineering faculty/department met with us for about 20 minutes (trying to convince my son to attend there) and mentioned that they are dropping chemistry from the curriculum for 4 out of 6 engineering disciplines. I hate to say it, but I mostly agree with him. Spending 6 or 8 credits on Chem 101/102 plus labs is not very useful for EE, or Computer Engineering or Civil Engineering or Mechanical Engineering majors. He said that for those majors, they can use those 8 credits more productively for classes in new disciplines (AI tools, machine learning, etc) that are more closely related or useful to those majors. I suspect that that idea will catch on and that soon most engineering majors will drop chemistry as a requirement.

Of course, nearly 50 years ago I took Chem 101 and Chem 102 and the associated labs, and even one semester of Organic Chemistry (which was extremely difficult for me because I tend toward “solving” rather than “memory” in the way I learn material).

I know for a fact that very few EEs ever use chemistry in their career. Perhaps only those that go into core semiconductor design (the physical design of semiconductors, not the logical design) would ever use it, but those are far and few between.

LOL, I never heard that saying. But I did hear “How do you know if someone attended Harvard?” … “They tell you within 2 minutes of meeting”, and this one really does appear to be mostly true in my experience. The fact is that nobody gets into Harvard or Yale without being REALLY good, both at school and at the subjective parts of schooling. One of my sons-in-law comes from a Yale family but didn’t make it into Yale and had to “settle” for Cornell instead. We still love him. :rofl:

We also had 4 required phys ed courses. And to add insult to injury, they were zero credit courses. Back then, Engineering majors required 136 credits (today most places require 128, and some even 120!) and they wanted to use ALL 136 on “real” courses. I was quite young and started college at age 16, I was also very impatient and worked it out to complete everything in 3 years. “Worked it out” makes it sound easy, but I needed waivers almost every semester - waivers of prerequisite, waivers of co-requisite, and I even tried to get a waiver of one semester of PE but no dice. Instead I had to fit a weird PE class of weightlifting in an ancient gym to cover that requirement one semester. I wish we had the option of bowling! And I took courses every summer, sometimes at my college, and sometimes at other colleges that had a lower pre-credit fee. Those required all sorts of paperwork for acceptance, so my college career caused me to become VERY familiar with the head of department. After a few semesters, he realized that I was a very good student and would joke around each time I came to see him “Ok, Mark, which waiver do you need now?” and at that point he would grant me any waiver I want, so I was allowed to take a bunch of graduate classes as my electives. But I used those credits to satisfy my undergrad requirements, so I couldn’t use them for my grad school requirements and took other graduate classes for that.

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Oh I didn’t mean “never.” You want to get into the bestest of the best law school or medical school, sure. You want to get hired by a big law practice (or a small one that specializes in Organized Crime in Memphis) then sure. But those are an exception, I suspect, maybe 1% or 2% of all those graduating, and there is a great mass of humanity just getting a job somewhere, even doctors and lawyers.

It’s probably the same in engineering; a choice few come out of Cornell or Lehigh or whatever the top flavor of Engineering school is, but thousands upon thousands of engineering students graduate and then go to work designing highways for the county or erecting buildings for data centers or WalMart or whatever.

I’m sure there are a few instances where it counts. In the scheme of things, not a very big number, I’d bet.

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Right. But Chemistry is useful for Chem. E. majors and pre-med.

When I had a double major in Chemistry and Biology in college (age 16 - 20, 1970 - 74) the U.S. had a large chemical industry footprint and there were plenty of jobs.

Wendy

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Sure. But not at Harvard. Or any of the Ivy leagues, I suspect. Which is why it is a very legitimate concern for Harvard that if they start getting stricter with grades, then some of their prospective admits might decide to forgo admission in favor of a school that doesn’t. If you’ve got 100 pre-med students in a given year at your college, and you decide that your Orgo professor has to start giving a certain percentage of them a B-minus or lower, then those kids are simply going to have more trouble in their pursuit of a top tier medical school admit. Which the type of very astute and typically very driven student who makes up your admitted class will definitely take into account.

BTW, plus two internet points for referencing the single most menacing Wilford Brimley role ever put to film…

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Not just “useful”, more like critical!

Nevertheless, for many decades, the trinity of Calculus/Physics/Chemistry have remained the base set of required first year courses for all engineering degrees before beginning your actual engineering courses. To me, that always seemed absurd, for example my EE101/102 courses, that are normally taken in the second year of college, had nearly zero need for any calculus, physics, or chemistry. So I took those classes in my first year instead. Of course, the only way to get permission to do that was to take AP calculus in high school. It’s almost like they do it to purposely lengthen college from 3 years to 4 years.

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Where my brother went to college in the 1970’s (RPI in Troy, NY), they wouldn’t let you graduate unless you could prove you knew how to swim. That’s the only reason he learned how.

intercst

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Jerry Saltz is the best known art critic in the US. He was a truck driver. He also married the top NYT critic now retired. He’s still working.

There are A grades which are a dime a dozen. Then there are A+ grades. My niece was an A+ student at Cornell 2024.

Data on the precise, university-wide percentage of Cornell students with A+ grades is not publicly released, but they are relatively rare due to strict guidelines, with some departments limiting them to the top 5% of students in a class.

The Cornell Daily Sun

Her brother is looking at a master’s program in the Netherlands. He has EU citizenship, and tuition is about $7000 per semester.

The top-ranked institution in the Netherlands (and globally) for climate change and environmental studies is Wageningen University & Research. Tied for 2nd worldwide alongside Harvard and Oxford, it offers premier English-taught graduate programs like MSc Climate Studies which blend earth, life, and social sciences. [1, 2, 3]

Other excellent Dutch universities specializing in climate and environmental change include:

** Utrecht University: Known for its highly regarded Earth, Life and Climate program, this university is a national focal point for earth sciences.*
** Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam): Offers a comprehensive Environment and Resource Management program on a highly sustainable campus.*
** Delft University of Technology (TU Delft): Ideal for an engineering focus, featuring a renowned Climate Action Programme focused on climate modeling and adaptation tech. [4, 5, 6, [7](Top 10 Colleges for International Students in the Netherlands]*

AI responses may include mistakes.

[1] https://www.mastersportal.com/search/master/climate-studies-meteorology/netherlands

[2] https://www.mastersportal.com/studies/1471/climate-studies.html

[3] https://www.topuniversities.com/university-subject-rankings/environmental-sciences

[4] Earth, Life and Climate - Utrecht University

[5] Research themes

[6] Master's Environment and Resource Management - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

[7] [Top 10 Colleges for International Students in the Netherlands](Top 10 Colleges for International Students in the Netherlands

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https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/no-one-cares-about-your-gpa-and-more-career-advice-for-new-grads-2696c174

No One Cares About Your GPA, and More Career Advice for New Grads

No one is impressed by your GPA

Take one last look at your sparkling transcript, then never mention it again.

Good grades have always been a dubious predictor of professional success. You happen to be part of a generation whose academic records are exceptionally hard to interpret. You were schooled at a time when widespread grade inflation coincided with the advent of AI shortcuts that colleges struggle to police.

Princeton just revised its 133-year-old honor code to require exam proctors because cheating has become so temptingly easy.

This isn’t necessarily your fault. But the reality is hiring managers don’t know how to judge the significance of a 4.0 when so many of you are crossing the commencement stage with near-perfect marks that may be AI-enhanced.

A lot of employers don’t bother to ask about grades. At companies that do, it’s safe to assume your new co-workers’ GPAs were just as good as yours. That’s all the more reason to not bring it up.

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